Feeling Much Better, Here is the News Anyways

informationliberation - Rialto, CA Police Made to Wear Cameras, Use of Force Drops by Over Two-Thirds. See, we are only safe if everything is recorded.

Yahoo - Reuters - Analysis: Mortgage bond sell-offs hit U.S. banks with big losses.

Yahoo - Reuters - SEC wins as ex-Goldman executive Tourre found liable for fraud.

Yahoo - Bloomberg - The $7 Trillion Problem That Could Sink Asia. What is the consequence of being the world's reserve currency, it means that you give away your value, your assets to back up your currency. This country was sold out 40 years ago when we went off a standard, the gold standard, a silly standard. Now we have to trade real assets for our dollars or hyper-inflate ourselves into extinction. Some would give away our future, our pensions, our social security and our 1st world status and lifestyle. At least for the majority of us.

What if you could own your own your home, your car and every other debt you had was extinguished; but, in exchange, China and Japan owned all of our natural resources. Would you consider that a good trade? I can give an alternative, what if we gave all our mortgages to the Chinese and paid them overtime? We did in fact sell them mortgage backed securities, trillions of dollars of them. What if we made good on those promises?

Money is a promise, it is a promise of materials, goods or services. That is all it is and all it has ever been. When nobody accepts your promise, your money is worthless. Nobody rides for free forever. What are you willing to trade to have a nice home or a nice car or a television. More importantly, what is your life worth? How many hours in a open pit with some third worlder killing himself to find some minerals so that you can have a cell phone are worth your slinging hamburgers at McDonalds, how much is your time worth and how much is their time worth? Should your misery be worth more than theirs.

I have heard people say they earned what they have. It is nonsense. It is a justification for how others must work harder than us. We deserve nothing, there is no deserve, that is the biggest lie. There is only grace and good fortune. The bible says that it is harder for a rich man to go through heaven than it is for a camel to go through the eye of a needle. Some have tried to explain this away and talk about doors to cities that required you to offload your camel first, it is nonsense. Either the bible is inspired or it is not. The imagery was intended to be powerful and it is. Consider the second part of what Jesus said, he said that through God all things were possible. If it were truly about offloading your camel before going through a gate, it would not require God's assistance. I do hope you understand that. You see, the second part of that comment is that the bible then says that through God all things are possible.

I often wonder whether or not our material blessings are our greatest spiritual challenges. We are so quick to take credit and reap the rewards of our efforts. We justify our gifts and benefits, we tell ourselves how we deserve them and earn them. I prefer the idea of grace, it is more accurate. What have any of us done to deserve a world with so many amazing natural resources? Please tell me how we deserve or earned a world of so much abundance and opportunity? Heck, I feel fortunate to live in a world with clean water.